I am in the early stages of designing a home theater. The bottom of the viewable part of the 115" diagonal screen will be about 24" above the floor to locate it properly for seated height. This will make the screen frame about 20" above the floor (4" frame). If I build a stage about 10" high, the bottom of the screen will be about 10" above the stage. With the VP180 being 9-1/4" high, it will essentially sit on the stage. Looks aside, is this a workable situation? The stage will be carpeted, will this affect the VP180 sound? I could raise the screen a bit, but at most might get 6" or so between the stage and VP180. Any thoughts?

Don, with the limited amount of vertical room that you'll have available, what you propose should be a good arrangement. The tweeters will be a bit low, of course(ear level is generally considered ideal), and it would be advisable to set the VP180 upside-down so that the slanted surface will point the tweeters upward, more closely pointing toward ear level.

Thanks guys for the feedback. Using the inverted configuration is a good idea, I had missed that option. I might want to make a small tapered stand to raise the VP180 just a bit and tilt it so the tweeters are pointed at ear level at the main seating location. The M80s will also be on the stage so the tweeters will be around ear level above the floor - around 40".

why can't you raise the screen, seems kinda low. For my screen the back row viewers (eyes) when seated are about 1/3 from bottom for viewing. The front row are near the bottom. My VP180 sits on the 180 stands from Axiom. Actually, my M80's can almost fit under the screen. Is your ceiling low?

The ceiling will be 10'. I'm basing the screen height on the rule of thumb that, ideally, the center of the screen should be at the MLP eye level. Using eye level as 42", the center would also be 42" above floor level. For my planned 100" wide 16:9 screen, the height is about 56", so the center is 28". For eye height of 42", the bottom of the screen would then be 14" above the floor. That's pretty low, so I went with eye level around 1/3 up from the screen bottom, so the bottom of the screen would be about 24" above the floor. For the back row, with a 10" riser, eye level would be right at screen center. What is the feedback here about optimum screen height vs eye level?My stage will be 4-1/2' deep at the center. I plan to put the center speaker near the front wall, so the front of it would be around 2-1/2 feet from the front of the stage. The mains (M80s) will be on the stage, not sure about the sub(s).

A lot depends on if your doing a 16:9 or 2.35 screen. I have 9ft ceilings. My screen is 10ft wide and 2.35 ratio. Rear seating line of site is about 1/3 from bottom, front row is near the bottom. I think personally center would be to high up from what I've read. I will take a picture a post later.